Well, at least there’s another mind officially on board to help wade through the minefield that is this time of the year.

To the surprise of no one — and a couple of days after some thought it might happen — Jeff Weltman arrived as the executive vice-president of basketball operations for the Raptors on Tuesday.

I know, fancy title, isn’t it? Guess you’ve got to come up with something that gives the perception that it’s a promotion from the last job but what Weltman is, regardless of how big his business card has to be to get the full title in large type — is Masai Ujiri’s right hand man and a bit of his conscience.

And he couldn’t have arrived soon enough given what this week might be like.

Any NBA GM worth his iPhone, Blackberry or whatever PDA he has (do they still call them PDA’s?) will tell you, this moratorium week is one of the oddest, most stressful of the season.

You get offers and maybe make counter-offers, agents are killing the phone lines offering to help spend some of your money and having another voice in the office to be heard certainly can’t hurt.

Especially around here.

The great Brian Windhorst of ESPN put on the tweeter Tuesday night that the Pistons had offered or will offer the expiring contracts of Old Friend Charlie Villaneuva and Rodney Stuckey to the Raptors for Rudy Gay.

Since I’m getting wind of this about 5 a.m. waiting for a car to the airport it’s awfully hard to verify and I know Brian pretty well so I’ll take him at his word that it’s legit.

And I would presume the conversation around the office went like this:

“Whaddya think?”

“Are you on crack?”

“Crack’s illegal and I’m not running for office, of course not. Why?”

“Look, we may or may not like Rudy Gay but if we turn him into two questionable talents just to save some money next summer, what are we telling ourselves, our players, our coaches, our fans?”

“That we’re firmly in the tank?”

“Yep. And why in the world wouldn’t we — if we even think about trading Rudy Gay — wait if we want to do that? We all agree he’s talented, right? We have no idea how he’ll work here because the 30 or so games a season ago are not a big enough sample size, we agree? And if this offer’s here now, don’t you think we might get better ones sometime in the next six months? Why don’t we do the sensible thing and laugh in the face of the Pistons? Why give off a sense of giving up right now? If we’re going to tank, let’s wait until we sell some tickets so we’re really stealing money?”

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